Benjamin Bratton, Associate Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, explains what's wrong with TED—at a TEDx event in San Diego. "My talk is about TED: what it is, and why it doesn't work." [via Gawker]

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I'm already re-watching this. And I'm going to have to re-watch it a few more times. There is some real density of thought in this video. It feels tremendously applicable to some of the problems I see in web development culture... which makes sense considering how much technology, entertainment, and design are intertwined in it.

The two thoughts from the video that immediately stick with me the most:

There's some tremendous tension right now between black/white thinking (things have to be either all bad or all good) versus a more realistic view that things are simply both some good and some bad. Generally this is resolved by people now such that things are either the best, the worse, or simultaneously the best/the worst. We can't seem to view things just as they are.

The hype cycle is poisoning the well of progress. Everybody wants to be using the newest, best thing. Even more, people want to be the inventor of the new best thing. In the rush, there's no time for history, philosophy, or ambiguity. We do more compulsively than we do deliberately.